Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner bondsman, rents a cottage in West Egg next to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby. Drawn into the world of his cousin Daisy and her brutish husband Tom, Nick becomes the confidant for Gatsby's singular, five-year obsession: to win back Daisy and recreate a perfect past, a dream that ultimately collides with reality and ends in violence.
That was his real name until seventeen, when he reinvented himself on the shores of Lake Superior. The son of poor, shiftless farmers, he had never accepted them as his true parents. His identity sprang from his own imagination the moment he saw Dan Cody’s yacht anchored in the shallows. He had been loafing on the beach in worn clothes, but the boy who rowed out to warn Cody of bad weather was already calling himself Jay Gatsby. Cody, a millionaire forged in Nevada silver fields and Montana copper, found him ambitious and quick. He took Gatsby aboard, outfitted him properly, and brought him along on a five-year voyage.
Gatsby served Cody as steward, mate, secretary, and even guardian, for the older man’s wealth made him a target for predatory women. The arrangement taught Gatsby the manners of the rich and instilled a lasting wariness of alcohol. When Cody died, a woman named Ella Kaye claimed the inheritance that should have gone to Gatsby. He was left with nothing but an education in wealth, persona, and the art of reinvention.
Weeks pass before Nick sees Gatsby again. He visits on a Sunday afternoon and finds Tom Buchanan on the porch with a man named Sloane and an attractive woman in riding clothes. Gatsby seems desperate to please, offering drinks and cigarettes while his guests accept his hospitality with barely concealed condescension. He mentions knowing Daisy, which unsettles Tom. The woman impulsively invites Gatsby and Nick to dinner, but Sloane makes clear the offer is hollow. Before Gatsby can retrieve his coat and follow in his car, the three riders mount their horses and disappear down the drive. Tom wonders aloud where Gatsby met Daisy, complaining that women run around too much these days.
The following Saturday, Tom accompanies Daisy to Gatsby’s party. His presence gives the evening a strained atmosphere. Daisy arrives in a mood of playful excitement, whispering to Nick about romantic possibilities, but her enthusiasm fades as the night progresses. She admires the movie director and his star sitting under a white-plum tree, finding their stylized, unreal glamour more palatable than the actual guests. The raw, unfiltered energy of West Egg appalls her. She is jarred by its bluntness, by the absence of the civilized euphemisms and social buffers that have always softened her world. The guests’ direct pursuit of pleasure feels crude and alarming.
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